have a national conversation about race. you can't even have a conversation about race around anything, and so the symbolic -- this is, you know, it's the price. this is the price of a ticket and like baldwin, i don't think 24 country can -- this country can ever give up on discussing legacies of racism in the country, the persistence of racism in the country, and by not talking about it, not raising the issue on the national level, on the state level, and local level, i think that's detrimental to those who are interested in pushing policies that would challenge those problems. >> host: last question. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: how do we get there? if obama gets a second term, is the price of the ticket different? >>is there a way he or black voters and what we do in this election, is there a way to start revival and what has to be

done in order to do so? >> guest: i hope so. i hope the wink and nod fades out, and personally, i hope he's re-legislated because the alternatives are worse. i want to put that out there. there's also -- there's the pressure to protect him. also looking into what a second term may possibly be, it's very likely we'd still be at the very least a republican dominated house, possibly senate, and so those first two years when there's the window of opportunity may have gone, hopefully, and for my perm perspective, people may be outraged by the second midterm, and maybe they're will be a democratic majority in the house and senate, but there's a lame duck two years. i'm sorry, i can't bring much

more home. bouncing about. a lot in 2008. looking at the lens of the political scientist outside of those rigorous statistical models, doesn't look all that great for those, for that possibility. i'm hoping it will be a seat change in congress and that there is a re-election, but, again, you're going to have to -- african-american voters, advocates of the issues have to pressure the president into doing it. >> host: absolutely enjoyed reading the book, enjoyed talking with you about it, and i hope many more people do the same. >> guest: well thank you so much for having me. that was "after words" booktv's signature program in which authors of the latest

non-fiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policymakers k legislatures, and others familiar with the material. it airs every weekend on booktv 10 p.m. saturday, 12 and 9 p.m. on sunday, and 12 a.m. on monday. you can also watch online. go to booktv.org and click on "after words" in the booktv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. author edward kline visited us at freedom fest in las vegas to talk about "the amateur" looking at president obama before and after he reached the white house. he's what he had to say. >> well, the book currently on your screen spent several weeks on the "new york times" best seller list, many weeks as number one. he's our guest on booktv on c-span2. where did you get the title for the book?

>> it came from a meeting that bill clinton had in new york, north of new york city where he has a home. he invited -- this was back in august 2011. he invited his wife, his daughter, chelsea, and a bunch of friends to meet with him because he had news. he had done a secret poll. this was in 2011, sorry. the polls showed if hillary clinton would challenge president obama for the democratic presidential nomination in 2012, he thought she could win. she was surprised by this. she said, bill, i'm the secretary of state, i have lunch with the man every thursday, what about loyalty, bill? he said, there's no such word as "loyalty" in politics. he said the people around obama did not understand how the real

world works, that they had been responsible for losing america, it's aaa credit rating for the first time in its history, and that president obama was, in his words, an amateur. now, i spoke to two people who were at that meeting, and when i heard that, i said "the amateur," that's the perfect title for the took. >> president clinton denied publicly he used that term. >> an interesting story. he's denied, but hillary clinton told her friends that she suspected that of all people, chelsea told me about this. now, that's not true. i've never melt -- met her, but apparently she has a reputation for texts friends. in the middle of meetings with her parents, but the meeting did take place, and it was an accurate representation of what went on in the meeting.

>> you talk about chelsea's reaction to the campaign in 2008. >> chelsea, like bill, her father, and they are close, felt that the democratic nomination was stolen from her mother and she deserved the candidacy, and not obama, and that the obamas had unfairly characterized her father, bill clinton, as a racist during the campaign, and he played unfair with him so she reallimented her mother to get back and challenge obama and run for president. >> aren't all presidents amateurs when they come into office? >> i'd say most are, but i don't think, for instance, dwight eisenhower was. i think he understood how to be a manager, executive, how to get things done.

i don't think lyndon johnson was an amateur when he inherited the presidency after the assassination. i think of lyndon johnson who could not give a good speech really who did not speak well for the tell -- teleprompter, but understood how to manipulate the levers in washington. he understood human nature. he understood the strength and weaknesses of the people in congress and how to play on those weaknesses and streps. obama doesn't seem to have the skill set to use human nature as a way of getting done what he wants to get done in washington. >> how many books have you written? >> well, i think this is my 11th book. there's three novels and eight notary public-fiction -- non-fiction books. >> what do you say to critics of your books? you refer this as a journalist

book. >> yes. what do the critics say? >> about the accuracy of the stories you tell, ect.. >> right. well, the fact of the matter is that as far as i know there has not been a single fact in the book that's been challenged in a cred l way. people say, oh, klein makes things up. that's what kids in the schoolyard, you know, they call each other names. i've been all kinds of names, but, in fact, when it comes to the celt -- credibility of reporting, nobody laid a glove on me yet. >> former editor of "the new york times" magazine for how long? >> 12 years as editor in chief of the magazine. many of my books have been exi remember -- excerpted by "vanity fair," and they have the most rigorous fact checking department, and of all the books excerpted, not a

single factual error has been found. >> you interviewed jeremiah wright, and what was that like? >> it was on the record and tape recorded. we sat down for three hours across a -- not even across the table. we were just sitting the way you and i were sitting with a tape recorder on the table and on our side, and it was an amazing experience because, first of all, i expected him to be bombastic the way he was on the videos of him and kind of raising his voice denouncing america, white people, jews, israel, and none of that happened in the interview. he was polite, courteous, low key speaking in a calm voice, seemed intelligent to me. of course, i don't agree with a lot of the things he's been

videotaped saying, but i'll say in the three hours, i believed his stories that he told me many interesting stories. >> and where is he now as far as his relationship with president obama? >> well, he clearly feels hurt and bitter that he was thrown under the bus as he sees it by president obama and the obama campaign during 2008. he felt that he had a special relationship with obama that went on for 23 years. it is a mistake to think that barak obama only knew jeremiah wright through sitting in a pew in his church and listening to these sermons. in fact, obama and jeremiah wright had a 1-and-1 relationship where they met for literally hundreds of times in

reverend wright's home, and in every step of obama's career, he went to reverend wright for advice, council, political direction. this was a relationship that was closer than any relationship in his life with the possible exception of his relationship with his own life, michelle obama. >> does he have any contact right now with the president? >> no, there's no contact. after obama won the presidency, the rev repped wright told me that he sent him a note congratulating him on achieving his ambition as he put it. he didn't expect the note to get to him directly, so he gave it to a neighbor of obama's who wright knew to hand deliver it, and he doesn't know to this day whether the note was delivered. >> who is steve rogers who you

interview in here from chicago? >> steve rogers is a professor at the kellogg school of management at northwestern university. >> what was his connection with president obama? >> like many african-american businessmen and leaders that i interviewed, he was early -- he was an early backer and sporter of obama. after obama lost a congressional primary to bobby rush in 2000, and rush is a former black pap there but now a congressman, he was deeply in debt, and he went around looking for people to donate money to his cause, and steve rogers, very successful businessman at that time, before he became a professor, gave him, i believe it was $6,000 to pay

off some of his personal debt. in return, obama promised that he would visit steve rogers' students, and if he won the u.s. senate seat, and speak to them. well, he did win the u.s. senate seat. rogers never heard from him, so he called him up, and he asked obama would he come, and he said, steve, i'm too busy. i'm getting phone calls from buffet and steve jobs and all of these important people, but roger said, you promised. obama says, well, you know, steve, you're not supposed to believe promises made by politicians, are you? rogers got angry. he demanded that he show up. eventually he did show up,

obama, but the point of the story is that sooming -- so many of the african-american leaders, businessmen, and political leaders i spoke to for this book told me similar stories in which they were there for him for obama day one. they were what you call day one people supporting him, organizing for him, contributing to him, and once legislated to the senate and eventually the presidency, they never heard again from him. there was a lack of gratitude, a lack of sense of obligation, and it was not only african-americans. it was also jewish-american donors who gave him vast sums of money and thefer got phone calls returned. it was oprah winfrey who worked hard and then was frozen out of the white house and carolyn

kennedy and on and on and on, so what i derived from this was this is a man who felt he was deserved, entitled to all of this support, and he didn't owe anything back in return. >> ed, what about michelle obama? what's her role in the white house? >> i love that picture of michelle obama. she's a very attractive woman as you can see in that picture. she's been on the cover the fashion magazines, and "vowing" had the headline, the first lady the world has been waiting for. michelle looks to tell the american public that she has no interest in politics, that she doesn't like politics, doesn't want to get involved in politics, and that her main interest is in raising her children, taking care of her husband, doing work for the appty-obesity campaign, but my

reporting turned up a very different, very different profill of michelle obama, a woman who, in fact, grew up in a household where her father was a political operative of the daly machine in chicago who was actually weaned on politics as a child, who married obama knowing of his political ambitions, and so she chose a politician to marry, and who has been his most important political partner at every step of his campaign, and every step of the presidency and has enormous amount of influence in his decision making process. >> all throughout his presidency and earlier, we heard michelle obama did not want him to run for office necessarily and she was reluctant of the half. >> we heard that story.

it's a great story. it's a story of a woman who doesn't seem to have any ambition. either for herself or husband, but, in fact, that's not the michelle obama i found when i interviewed her close friends, people who knew her back in chicago days, people who now know her. michelle obama loves being first lady. she is a very, very intelligent, well-educated, well-spoken woman with great opinions, strong opinion, but who also has a reputation earned for liking the comfortable lifestyle, and here in the white house, she has people taking care of her every want and wish. she's gone on many, many

vacations, some controversial, destain, and to the ski slopes west of the united states. 42 days on vacation. she's living the life of a very pampered woman, and apparently this fits with her personality. >> you where "as where the clintons were open and above board on co-presidency beau boasting hillary clinton was equal with bill, obamas hide the fact that michelle is the president's most important political adviser and the one he listens to above all others before he makes major decisions." >> yes. i think that's so true. the way she does that is often through her very best friends, how she gets her opinions through. her very best friend, valerie

jared. she's a woman who hired michelle many, many years ago to work with her in mayor daly's administration in chicago, but more importantly, valerie jared is the person who comes from a very well off african-american family with great connections to power sources all over chicago. she introduced barack and michelle obama to power centers, african-american well-off businessmen, jewish-american donors, daly political operatives, and other sources of influence, and as a result, she raised the obamas from really obscurity in chicago to a position in which they were now socializing and rubbing shoulders with power centers,

and it was the power centers that made it possible for obama to first become a united states senator and then the president of the united states. they owe a great deal to valerie and treat her as though she has their godmother. she's now the senior adviser to both the first lady and the president of the united states and obama, himself, said i run all my decisions through valerie, and i trust her implicitly. we are short of the president and first lady short of valerie jared. >> you write trying to figure out the hole on the president and first lady is a guessing game in the parlors and dining rooms of washington. >> it's spring because what is her source of power. after all, she doesn't have foreign policy experience, but

she attends national security council meetings. she doesn't have economic background, but she's often in the most important domestic meetings regarding the economy. no one gets to see the president without going through valerie. what's the power she has? the only explanation i could come up with after all the interviews i did was that she has given the first lady and the president the impression that she has their back, that she's protecting them from a hostile world, if you will, a world in which the people could come to see the president and make proposals that would not be to his liking. for instance, when, as an example, when the president wanted to do a mandate requiring religious institutions to

provide free medical care, free health insurance for abortions and contraception, bill daly, the then chief of staff, brought arch bishop from new york, the catholic arch bishop who is now cardinal dolan to speak to the president. he was opposed to the mandate as a catholic. when valerie heard about it, she went ballistic because bill daly, the chief of staff, hadn't asked her permission to allow dolan to see the president. suddenly, her power of control was challenged. it was at that point that daly lost power in the white house, and eventually, he realized he couldn't get things done, and he resigned. >> what is or was valerie's relationship with rahm emanuel in the white house? >> not a good one. to this day, rahm does not have

good things to say about vale. he was opposed to the president, and this is not just my reporting, but other's reporting as well, the president going for broke on obamacare. he thought he should do incremental steps first, small steps, popular steps he could get republican backing for. vale and michelle obama were the two people who said, listen, mr. president -- actually valerie calls him barack, the only person in the white house other than michelle who does, you were elected to be not just president, but to be a special president, a transformational president, a person who is going to change the direction and course ofmerica, and you can't just do this piecemeal. you have to take the whole thing. go for the health care bill, to

go down in history as the first president to pass a national health care bill, and he listened to vale and michelle, not to rahm emanuel, and this was the beginning of emanuel's erosion of power because it was one of several examples to which the president listened to the ideology of valerie rather than the pragmatic advice of rahm's, and ultimately, rahm was forced out of the white house by michelle and valerie, and to this day, he resents that. >> ed, what are your politics? are you a conservative? >> i think i would describe myself as someone who is right of center. that makes me conservative, then i'm conservative. i'm certainly not a liberal. my training as a reporter ask to let the facts speak for themselves, but i do have a

sense that this country has been drifting in the wrong direction, and that it ought to be righted, if you will, using that word "right" in bothceps of the -- both sense of the word. >> have your politics changed over the years? >> i think i've been a conservative or conservative leaning for quite some time. i don't think they've gotten anymore conservative. on some social issues, i'm actually quite libertarian and liberal. >> were you surprised by some of the findings in your book? >> i tell you the thing that surprised me the most in this book. i expected in the many trips i took to chicago. i live in new york, but went to chicago many times. i expected to find, and this may be my own prejudices, that african-americans would by, you

know, unanimously tell me how much they loved president obama because they are black and he's black and that's the way things are. that's not what i found at all. what i found is among the leaders of the african-american community, not the street, but the leadership, the people who are well-educated, the people who have business interests, the people who are concerned about the direction of the country in a larger sense, that to a man and a woman, they were displeased and disillusioned with president obama. they pointed out, for instance, that today whereas the national average of unemployment is 8.2%, in the african-american community, it's 14.1%, and in some cities like detroit, it's 18%, and in some areas,

especially among african-american youth, it can be 30% and 40 #%. it's a suppression in the african-american -- depression in the afternoon community, not a recession. they don't feel president obama addressed this, that his economic policies failed not only america as a whole, but the african-american community in particular. >> from "the amateur," you write "by all accounts obama was elected to the job for little re-election lish. he doesn't find joy in being president. like richard nixon and jimmy carter, he's an introvert who prefers his own company to that of others." >> yes, it's a kind of ironic that president obama in public, makes public appearances, comes across as a likable, outgoing, upbeat guy, and we can see again and again that his likability

quotient far outruns his wholly numbers in job approval. he's a liked person in public, but that is his performance we're talking about as a public figure. in terms of his actual working in the government, the governance of the country, again and again i learned from both republicans and democrats, that he doesn't have the skill set that a lyndon johnson had, for instance, who understood how to ma manipulate the levers of power in washington, or ronald reagan who got together at the end of the day with tip o'neill, democratic speaker of the house, have a drink with him, remember, tell joke, and then work out how to get a bill passed. president obama doesn't seem to know how to do that. he, in fact, in private, he's a very introverted person who doesn't reach out beyond a small

group of chicago operatives from whom he's brought with him to the white house. >> oprah tried to ignore the change in tone coming from the obama transition team. as obama's inauguration drew near, calls to michelle were unreturned. instead, she heard from max debler, newly appointed white house ceremonies coordinated who told oprah she needed to talk to him first about the interview. again, she had to run the interview questions past jeff stevens, a deputy speech writer, for prior approval. it was a pain as far as oprah was concerned said a high ranking executive at harpo studios. oprah's not liking to put up with mid-level clerks. >> she expected as a result of her role in the primaries playing a pivot toll role in helping obama get the nomination

and resting it away from hillary clinton, that she was going to be an important adviser to president obama, and, in fact, after he was elected president, oprah and obama spoke at some great length about her, using her to advise him on his community cation strategy, especially in terms of television which he, of course, knows a lot about. when michelle and valerie heard about this, they felt that this was a threat to their control over the access to the president, and they didn't like that at all so when oprah offered to do an oprah winfrey show from the white house to launch michelle obama's anti-obesity campaign, michelle held a meeting in the east wing of the white house where the

first lady has her office and said i don't want some rich, fat woman being the emblem of my anti-obesity campaign. that got back to oprah. she found out about that. she was furious. she said michelle, and i interviewed her staff, michelle doesn't like rich people, she doesn't like fat people, she doesn't want me waddling around the white house, and she then washed her hands of the whole thing, and announced she is not going to campaign in 2012 for obama. ..

and obama's does not want to do that. if karl rove watches his brain than barack obama zero was his home. [laughter] that is a good lie in. david axelrod is the creator

so when barack obama ran he did not haq of record to run on but what he had was his personal story the black african and list was insight

into his character and hubris of himself he doesn't really understand how the world works that makes him an amateur.

>> host: you say he proposed n new term for his term in office? >> yes. what the historian said i don't think that is a good idea to call it a new foundation. it sounds like elements girdle. >> host: you go to great lengths to talk to the historian at the table but you eight outside of the city not to be recognized. >> they were all sworn to secrecy and not supposed to report but i finally got to one of them to agree to talk

on the condition of anonymity. he or she agreed as long as i did not identify that person. by disguise them by not using their name but iran the persian and was told that is exactly what happened. >> host: we're talking with edward klein talking about the amateur. barack obama in the warehouse. published by regnery. of best-seller the last few weeks.